Mutation (Twenty-Five Percent Book 1) (16 page)

“Over there,” Micah yelled, pointing. 

Up ahead, a metal ladder climbed the wall to the bank above.  Micah was already swimming for it.  By the time Alex caught up, he was out of the water, climbing as fast as he could.  Alex hauled himself onto the rungs.  As soon as he was clear of the river, everything he was carrying and wearing became ten times heavier, his muscles numb almost to the point of paralysis from the cold water. 

Reaching the top of the ladder, he found Micah lying on his back, gasping for breath.  Alex climbed onto the rough grass and bent, hands braced on his thighs, breathing hard.  The sound of approaching moans wrenched him from his far too brief rest.

Micah groaned.  “Don’t they ever get tired?”

Alex held out his hand, pulling Micah to his feet when he grasped it, and they took off at a laboured jog into a residential area.  Almost immediately, they came across more eaters and were forced to start fighting their way through.  Alex was pretty sure their guns would still work wet, but the last thing they wanted was to bring even more eaters to them so they relied solely on the skull-spikers.  After twenty minutes of not getting anywhere fast, with the main horde of eaters still on their trail, he was exhausted.

The sheer number of eaters was astounding.   The city had a population of over two hundred and seventy thousand, more than half of which would have been trapped inside the barriers, so Alex knew he shouldn’t be surprised.  But he had assumed the number of people who had survived would outnumber those who had been infected.  That assumption, probably born more of wishful thinking than any real evidence, was beginning to look horribly wrong.

An eater grabbed the collar of Micah’s jacket, pulling him backwards as he was about to plunge his knife into another’s skull.  Its mouth snapped at the back of his head.  Alex grasped the woman’s long hair and yanked it away, jabbing his skull-spiker into its ear.

“We can’t keep going like this,” Micah huffed, stabbing the eater in front of him and watching it fall to the ground. 

It was the first time he’d complained and Alex was secretly impressed with his stamina.  He himself felt ready to drop.  The moans of the main horde were close, as always. 

He spotted a narrow alley beside a house.  “That way. Maybe we can lose them.”

The alley led to a wider thoroughfare behind the row of houses, lined with back gardens and garages.  It was mercifully empty.  They’d only gone a few steps, however, when they heard a voice. 

“Pssst.” 

They stopped and looked around, searching for the source of the breathy sound. 

“Over here,” someone hissed.

Micah nudged Alex’s arm and he turned to see a back gate open behind them, a hooded figure leaning out.  The figure beckoned and stepped back out of sight. 

They stood looking at the opening.

“We have two choices,” Alex said, keeping his voice low, “carry on along this alley and hope the horde doesn’t find us, or go through that gate and hope we don’t get attacked again.”

“We’re armed,” Micah pointed out.

“And yet, people still keep attacking us.”  Alex flexed his hands.  They still ached a little when he moved them.

“To be accurate, they keep attacking you,” Micah said.  “I just get caught up in it.”

A moan interrupted Alex’s retort.  Ahead of them, two eaters wandered into the end of the alley, lifting their heads when they saw Alex and Micah and scenting the air.  Three more followed.  The eaters were upwind, but it was only a matter of time before they got a whiff of Micah. 

“Make it slow,” Alex said.  “They can’t smell you yet.”

They shuffled away from the eaters towards the open gate, the decision about whether or not to trust the person behind it no longer an issue.  Once inside the garden, the figure they had seen closed the gate behind them and pushed down the hood covering their face.  Alex drew in a breath.  It was a woman.  She placed one slender finger over her full, red lips, puckering them in a silent ‘ssshh’, and then motioned for them to follow her. 

Alex’s eyes dropped to her perfectly shaped backside as she walked away from them before noticing Micah doing the same.  Alex elbowed him in the ribs, tried to affect an appalled look as if he hadn’t just been doing the exact same thing, and followed her.

The building they entered was a large detached house which had at some point been split into two flats.  A staircase immediately inside the back door led up a flight of stairs to a blue door at the top.  The woman opened the door and a thick puff of lavender air freshener escaped.

Alex couldn’t stop a sneeze as the woman led them inside.  The smell was so strong he had to blink away tears.

“Are you alright?” she said when she’d closed the door behind them.  “I saw you running from all those eaters at the front.  I was afraid they’d caught you.”  She pushed a strand of long, auburn hair behind her ear.

“We’re fine, thanks to you,” Micah said, smiling and holding out his hand.  “I’m Micah.”

The woman took it and smiled.  “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.  I’m Kerry.”

“Well, we still owe you our thanks, Kerry.”  Micah hadn’t let go of her hand.  Alex had to marvel at his ability to go from fighting for his life to lothario in under five minutes. 

When Micah finally released his grip, Kerry turned her gaze to Alex and he braced himself for the familiar look of fear and/or disgust.  Instead, she smiled, tiny wrinkles forming around her beautiful green eyes.

“Uh, Alex,” were the only two words he could remember.  He hid a grimace.  Was that really the best he could come up with?  One of them wasn’t even a proper word. It had been too long since a gorgeous woman had paid him any attention.

“What were you doing out there?” she said, when he failed to expand further on his erudite introduction.  “I didn’t think it was very safe on the streets.”

“Right now, we’re just trying to get home,” Micah said.  “You’re right though, it isn’t safe on the streets.”

She nodded, causing the light to sparkle across the soft waves of her hair, and focused on their clothes.  “Why are you wet?”

Alex looked down at himself.  “Yeah, sorry about this.  We had to jump in the river to escape some eaters.  A lot of eaters.”

“And you’re hurt,” she said, taking Alex’s right hand. 

The sodden bandage was barely attached anymore and she gently unravelled it to reveal the cuts beneath. 

“It’s okay, really,” he said, “as long as I haven’t picked up anything nasty from the river.” 

Kerry let go. 

Great, Alex, he thought, tell her more about any infectious diseases you might have.

“Do you live around here?” she said as she walked along the hall ahead of them.

Micah glanced at Alex with a smirk and followed.  “No, we’re just passing through.”

Alex trudged after them to a bedroom.

“You can change in here,” she said.  “And the bathroom’s across the hall.”  She opened a wardrobe to reveal a rail full of men’s clothing.  “Take whatever you want.  It belonged to my ex-boyfriend so I don’t mind what you have.  There are towels in the cupboard in the bathroom.”  She flashed them a stunning smile and walked from the room.

“Well, that was weird,” Alex said when she’d left.

“What was weird?” Micah said, stripping off his shirt and dropping it onto the wooden floor.

“She wasn’t afraid of me at all.  And she has just invited two strangers into her home.  And this.”  He indicated the wardrobe.

“A gorgeous woman helps us and you’re doubting her motives?”  Micah picked out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from the wardrobe and walked to the door.  “Drop the detectiving and just be glad we’re alive.  I smell like a sewer.  I’m going to rinse off all this river crud.  You can have the bathroom after me.”

. . .

After Alex had showered and changed, he joined Kerry and Micah where they were chatting in her monochrome lounge.  The room faced the front of the house and Alex walked to the window to check the road where they had been fifteen minutes earlier.  It was crammed with eaters.  Fortunately, none of them were paying particular attention to the house.

“They won’t get in,” Kerry said.  “There are a lot of infected around, but they don’t bother going near the houses unless they see someone go into one.  And even then they can’t get through the doors, usually.  There was poor Mr Hollinger down the road yesterday, but his door was in terrible condition.  A strong breeze could have knocked it down.”  She smiled.

“Oh, well, um, it’s good you’re safe here,” Alex replied, turning away from the window and finding a place on the sofa.  Micah had taken the chair closest to Kerry.  “Thank you for letting us in.”

She smiled.  “It’s my pleasure.  What will you do now?  It could be a while before the infected leave and it’ll be dark soon.”

A glance at his watch, which, amazingly, was still working, told Alex it was after five.  Which was surprising, considering how early he’d been woken by Rowe and his cronies.

Apparently, time flew when you were running and fighting for your life.

“We hoped to get back hours ago,” Micah said, “but we’ve been sidetracked a bit.”

“Well, I have two spare bedrooms,” she said.  “You’re welcome to stay for the night.”

“Really?  But you don’t know us.”  Alex wanted to kick himself for saying it, but the policeman in him needed to tell her how dangerous that was under any circumstances.

She smiled.  “If you can’t trust a policeman, who can you trust?” she said, pointing at the badge on his belt.

He’d put it back on after changing out of habit.  Finally, wearing it had paid off.

“And having a strong Survivor here will make me feel so much safer,” she added.

Alex stared at her in shock.  That was an attitude he’d never come across before.

“I’m an expert in mixed martial arts,” Micah said.

It smacked of desperation.  Alex wanted to roll his eyes, but as Micah was facing away from him, his attention fixed on Kerry, he didn’t bother.

Her face lit up.  “Then I’m going to be the luckiest woman in the city tonight.  Would you like tea?  Or coffee?”

Alex couldn’t help wondering what she meant by “luckiest”.  Because the way she said it, with a smile that could easily have been interpreted as suggestive, was making his heart beat faster.  He hoped he wasn’t picking up signals that weren’t really there.  It had been a long time since he’d had to interpret romantic feelings from a woman, but his recent success, with at least two women not looking at him in disgust when he spoke to them, seemed to be going to his head.

“Coffee, please,” Micah said.  “Two sugars.”

She looked past him to Alex.

“The same for me, thank you.”

It wasn’t the words she spoke next that annoyed Alex.  It wasn’t even the way she said them.  It was that she said them while brushing her fingers across Micah’s shoulder on her way past.

“I’ll be right back.” 

As Kerry disappeared into the hallway a smug smile spread across Micah’s face.  He leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.

This time, Alex did roll his eyes.  “Our world turns to crap, we’re fighting for our lives on an almost hourly basis, and all you can think of is getting your rocks off.”

“You’re just jealous because the hot girl likes
me
.”

“I am not.”  He was. 

“Your nose is growing.”

“I was getting signals in my direction too,” Alex said, sounding more defensive than he would have liked.

“They were just random overspill from the signals she was sending me.”

“You’re deluded.”

“Seriously, though,” Micah said, “if she makes a move on either one of us, the other one backs off.  Okay?”

Alex sighed and slumped back into the sofa, dropping his head onto the back of the cushion.  “Yeah.  It’ll be you she wants though.”

“I can’t help it if women find me irresistible,” Micah said.  “Devastating good looks like mine are both a blessing and a curse.  Although mostly a blessing.”

Alex shook his head.  “Dream on.  It will be you because you don’t have these.”  He waved one hand at his face and widened his eyes.

Micah studied him for a few seconds before saying, “You ever thought of wearing lenses?”

Some Survivors wore coloured contact lenses to hide the deformity and experience life without the casual prejudice they were normally subjected to on a daily basis.  Alex objected to them from a moral point of view, but he understood why they did it.  He’d even considered it at the beginning, during some of his darker days. 

He shrugged.  “Once or twice, in my weaker moments.”

Micah was silent for a while.  “Maybe I’m wrong,” he said eventually.  “Maybe she does like you.”

Alex lifted his head and raised his eyebrows. 

Micah grinned.  “Oh, who am I kidding?  Of course she likes me.  What woman could resist this?”  He waved his hand up and down at himself.

Alex leaned his head back again and closed his eyes.  “You’re not just deluded, you’re deranged.”